Medical and nutrition studies in the past thirty years have established that dietary fiber is a necessary dietary element for good human health. Low intake of dietary fiber is associated with high incidents of several diseases including coronary heart disease, diabetes, obesity, and colon cancer. Dietary fiber is broadly divided into water soluble and water insoluble subgroups. Plant and fungi foods are major sources of dietary fiber. Dietary fiber functions as a gastrointestinal regulator in food digestion process. The modes of action of dietary fiber in the human gastrointestinal tract include providing mechanical distention through its water holding activity, stimulating bowel movement, slowing down the gastrointestinal transition and digestion process, modifying fat absorption, increasing bile acids excretion, and detoxicating toxic substances. Soluble dietary fibers are found to have cholesterol-lowering and leveling postprandial glycemic response effects in clinical studies.
Average intake of dietary fiber in the United States is reported to be 13 grams per day per person. The USDA currently recommends that dietary fiber intake be 25 grams for people with a diet of 2,000 calories intake per day and 30 grams for people with a diet of 3,000 calories per day. In order to increase dietary fiber intake from 13 grams per day to 25 grams per day or even 30 grams per day, one would need to ingest an extra 12 grams to 17 grams of dietary fiber per day. Relying on vegetables, fruits and grains as the source of dietary fiber would requires at least double the consumption of these products per day. This approach would require a dramatic change of lifestyle, which appears to be difficult to accomplish in today's fast-paced society where most food items are highly processed for convenience and ease of preparation and consumption. In view of the desire for fast, convenient yet healthy foods, a practical approach for sufficient dietary fiber intake is to enrich processed food products with dietary fiber. It would therefore be advantageous to enrich the most frequently consumed convenient food items such as beverages, pastries and baked products with dietary fiber.
Beverage products, which are suitable for fiber enrichment, include vegetable juice, fruit juice, and other beverages traditionally containing sugar, color and flavorings. Many sources of soluble dietary fiber are commercially available which have potential uses in beverage application. Among some of the most popular soluble fiber sources are guar gum, pectin, psyllium husk, carageenan, methylcellulose and hydroxypropanylmethylcellulose. Unfortunately, these fibers are known to increase viscosity of a beverage thereby making the beverages unpalatable.
Guar gum has been used for human consumption for over fifty years. Clinical studies have shown that guar gum lowers plasma total and LDL cholesterol and postprandial glycemic responses. Guar gum is partially digestible. Its digestible energy value is almost 4 calories per gram. Guar gum is a highly viscous gum; an aqueous solution of 1% guar gum has a viscosity of 3000 centipoise. When hydrolyzed, guar gum becomes less viscous. Partially hydrolyzed guar gum is a commercially available product available from several suppliers. One example of partially hydrolyzed guar gum is BENEFIBERT.TM. manufactured by Sandoz Nutrition Ltd. Golay et al. (1995) reported a beverage application using hydrolyzed guar gum and its benefit in lowering glycemic responses in diabetic patients.
Arabinogalactan, also called larch gum, is extracted from western larch trees. It is a long, densely branched polysaccharide with molecular weight ranging from 10,000-120,000 . Galactose and arabinose, the building blocks of arabinogalactan, are at a ratio of about as 6 to 1 in the polysaccharide molecule. Some in vitro lab studies have shown that arabinogalactan shows promise in strengthening immune function and antiviral effects. Japanese Publication No. JP02154673 and Japanese Publication No. JP 02215353, discloses the manufacture of beverages with arabinogalactan. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,294,544, 3,443,955, 3,704,138, 3,737,322, 3,738,843, and 4,228,198 disclose using arabinogalactan as a sweetener or food ingredient, but a use for beverages was not disclosed.